Book
The Audience and Business of YouTube and Online Videos
(2018)
Abstract
This book is a thorough analysis of digital natives as YouTube audiences as well as creators of online videos. Using a mixed method approach, the authors examine the underexplored business side of YouTube: its audience in the form of product review videos, comments on videos, YouTube and other social media and online video services such as Netflix and Hulu, brand videos, sponsored videos and online video advertising. It will also be the first book that examines YouTube Red and other YouTube services such as subscription, pay TV, and movie services.
YouTube is conceptualized as a global video portal and the go-to video encyclopedia and demonstration site for the online generation. Although general media attention has focused on the most popular channels and the YouTube influencers, this book calls for audience empowerment through active input to the metrics that determine the algorithm of YouTube’s video recommendation system and identify the weakness of the chase of the most viewed videos which facilitates sensationalism and star power. The availability of both professional and user-generated content on YouTube is what made YouTube so special. The boundary between amateur content and professional content diminishes as popular YouTubers are cultivated and professionalized by YouTube and its intermediary networks to be star producers and influencers.
YouTube’s diverse ecosystem and its global audiences and video creators are facilitating the formation of a global village where we see people in other countries in action without censorship. Different organizations, including governments, educational institutions, non-profit organizations, media organizations, and businesses, set up their YouTube channels to reach national and foreign audiences. YouTube is the only global platform that can accommodate so many videos from all over the world.
Instead of facilitating a participatory culture as past YouTube research emphasized, this book presents YouTube as the cultivator of a promotional and entrepreneurial culture through its open policy to various individuals and organizations to promote themselves through posting and sharing videos. YouTube is part of the online video industry. The online video audience behavior revealed and analyzed in the book lays the foundation for future research on online video audiences.
Keywords
- YouTube,
- Online Videos,
- Video streaming,
- product review video,
- user-generated content,
- OTT,
- eWOM,
- digital natives,
- video sharing,
- online audience,
- in-stream video advertising
Disciplines
Publication Date
2018
Editor
Louisa Ha
Publisher
Lexington Press, Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN
978-1-4985-7648-2
DOI
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498576482/The-Audience-and-Business-of-YouTube-and-Online-Videos
Citation Information
Louisa Ha. The Audience and Business of YouTube and Online Videos. Lanham, Maryland(2018) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/louisa_ha/48/